VIA made quite a splash early this year when they announced the Isaiah CPU architecture, which was developed at their Centaur design center. At the time of the announcement, we spoke with VIA's Centaur design center president, Glenn Henry, to get a deeper insight into what VIA had in store with Isaiah, but we weren't given many hard details regarding final clock speeds and specifications, performance, branding, or availability.Today though, VIA is ready to disclose a few more details regarding the Isaiah CPU architecture. First off, Isaiah-based processors now fall under the Nano...Read more...

Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9300 has some rather large shoes to fill. This newly shipping, relatively low-cost quad-core processor from Intel is a replacement for their long-standing price to performance champ, the Core 2 Quad Q6600. The Q6600 was the first quad-core in Intel’s arsenal which was actually affordable, and even today, it remains one of the best values on the market. Not only is the Core 2 Quad Q6600 inexpensive for a quad-core CPU, but it is extremely overclockable and provides a significant amount of computing power for the dollar. Core 2 Quad Q6600’s are still in high-demand...Read more...

Intel’s Core 2 Quad Q9300 has some rather large shoes to fill. This newly shipping, relatively low-cost (~$270) quad-core processor from Intel is a replacement for their long-standing price to performance champ, the Core 2 Quad Q6600. The Q6600 was the first quad-core in Intel’s arsenal which was actually affordable, and even today, it remains one of the best values on the market. Not only is the Core 2 Quad Q6600 inexpensive for a quad-core at around $230, but it is extremely overclockable and provides a significant amount of computing power for the dollar. Core 2 Quad Q6600’s...Read more...

When AMD first announced plans to introduce triple-core processors back in September of last year, reaction to the news was mixed. Some felt that AMD was simply planning to pass off partially functional Phenom X4 processors as triple-core products, making lemonade from lemons if you will. Others thought it was a good way for AMD to increase bottom line profits, getting more usable die from a single silicon wafer and mitigating yield loss. We were somewhat perplexed by the first reaction. This is an age-old strategy in the semiconductor space and after all, the graphics guys...Read more...

When AMD first announced plans to introduce triple-core processors back in September of last year, reaction to the news was mixed. Some felt that AMD was simply planning to pass off partially functional Phenom X4 processors as triple-core products, making lemonade from lemons if you will. Others thought it was a good way for AMD to increase bottom line profits, getting more usable die from a single silicon wafer and mitigating yield loss. We were somewhat perplexed by the first reaction. This is an age-old strategy in the semiconductor space and after...Read more...

In an impromptu pre-IDF press briefing today, Intel disclosed a wealth of new information regarding its roadmap product efforts, upcoming multi-core processors and their associated platforms. The discussion, chaired by the Senior VP of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, Pat Gelsinger, even covered additional detail of the company's future play in the discrete GPU space, code-named Larrabee. Pat dove in quickly with what was probably Intel's most ambitious design effort yet, that will bear fruit some time in 2H '08, the new six-core infused...Read more...

And this is why analyst calls, while often dry, are a wealth of information. In their Q4 2008 post-results conference call, NVIDIA clarified its AGEIA plans.Huang revealed that Nvidia's strategy is to take the PhysX engine and port it onto CUDA. For those not in the know, CUDA stands for Compute Unified Device Architecture, and it's a C-like application programming interface Nvidia developed to let programmers write general-purpose applications that can run on GPUs. All of Nvidia's existing GeForce 8 graphics processors already support CUDA, and Huang confirmed that the cards will be able...Read more...

With all the buzz around VIA's recent announcement of their next generation low power Isaiah mobile processor, we thought it would be a good idea to get together with some of VIA's top architecture and design brass in a "fireside chat" sort of venue. The idea was to provide a little more insight into what the team at VIA feels will be the real value proposition of their ultra low power Isaiah mobile X86 processor and how the product will differentiate versus current and future offerings from the likes of Intel, AMD and others. Our direct line of contact was with VIA's Centaur design...Read more...

With all the buzz around VIA's recent announcement of their next generation low power Isaiah mobile processor and the parade of online coverage of the recent press event VIA held at their Centaur design center in Texas, we felt rather than regurgitating the usual marketing fluff and press pitch material, we would get together with some of VIA's top architecture and design brass in a "fireside chat" sort of venue. The idea was to provide a little more insight into what the team at VIA feels will be the real value proposition of their ultra low power Isaiah mobile X86 processor and how...Read more...